The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for booting a system in which operation of a CPU is started based on a program.
As a system boot apparatus which boots a system by starting operation of a CPU based on a boot program, there has been conventionally known a system boot apparatus which starts operation of the CPU by access to a ROM in which the boot program is stored. However, there has been recently proposed an apparatus (circuit apparatus) which transfers a program (user program) stored in the ROM (separate memory unit) to a RAM (internal volatile memory) and starts operation of the CPU by access to the program thus transferred to the RAM (for example, see Published Japanese translation of PCT international publication for patent application No. 2001-512258, paragraph 0015).
The transfer speed (access speed) of the RAM is generally faster than that of the ROM. Therefore, by starting operation of the CPU using the program transferred to the RAM as described above, the time required for system boot can be reduced.